The kings are not subject to check or mate, but the knights are! The
object of the game is to mate the knight of the opponent. Castling between
knight and rook is possible, under the same rules as castling between a
king and rook in orthodox chess.

Written by Hans Bodlaender.
Michael Keller noted an error, and has sent the sample game and picture of closing position.
Bryan Lambert noted two errors.
WWW page created: 1995 or 1996. Last modified: February 28, 2001.
﻿

Comments

I still consider that a dubious claim.
From what I have seen from engines playing it, Shogi is all about attacking the King with drops.
To alter the King move has a much larger impact in making it unlike Shogi than making a small minority of the pieces you could drop to catch that King vaguely resemble a Gold General makes it more Shogi-like.
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E.g. dropping a Gold two squares in front of a King in Shogi often leads to an unavoidable mate (Hishi).
Dropping a Commoner in front of a Royal Knight does nothing of the sort.
It is not even a mate threat, despite you having other Commoners in hand.

OTOH, when the royal piece then jumps away like a Knight it looks nothing like Shogi. So this is an extremely dubious claim.
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Crazyhouse drop rules will never really look like Shogi. Crazyhouse revolves all around dropping Pawns on 7th rank and promoting them. In Shogi Pawn drops are usually not possible because of the 1-Pawn-per-file restriction. It is that rule that really causes the main difference in character between Crazyhouse and Shogi games.

Richard Kochanski has suggested the game Knightmate Drop Chess, which he describes as "KnightMate Chess with Crazyhouse Drop rules." The advantage to such a game would be that dropping Kings instead of Knights would make the game feel more like Shogi.

Years ago I had exactly the same idea, but when I tested it, I didn t like it at all. I guess, to design a game featuring a Royal knight, it needs more than just switching the roles of knight and king.